New from Cambridge University Press!

Edited By Keith Allan and Kasia M. Jaszczolt

This book "fills the unquestionable need for a comprehensive and up-to-date handbook on the fast-developing field of pragmatics" and "includes contributions from many of the principal figures in a wide variety of fields of pragmatic research as well as some up-and-coming pragmatists."

Academic Paper

Under the weak layering approach to prosodic structure (Itô & Mester ), the requirement that output forms be exhaustively parsed into binary feet, even when the input contains an odd-number of syllables, results in the , which consists of two sub-problems. The is a pathological type of quantity-sensitivity where a single odd-numbered heavy syllable in an odd-parity output is parsed as a monosyllabic foot. The is the systematic conversion of odd-parity inputs to even-parity outputs. The article examines the typology of binary stress patterns predicted by two approaches, symmetrical alignment (McCarthy & Prince ) and iterative foot optimisation (Pruitt , ), to demonstrate that the odd-parity input problem is pervasive in weak layering accounts. It then demonstrates that the odd-parity input problem can be avoided altogether under the alternative structural assumptions of weak bracketing (Hyde ).